Incomprehensible Scares: The 4th Wall

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If you ask me, we’re in a new golden age for horror games. Between heavy hitters like Dead Space and less costly efforts like Lone Survivor, Amnesia, Slender, and Asylum, we’ve got enough things going bump in the night that I’m surprised they haven’t stepped on each others’ toes and ended up in some cringe-worthy slapstick shenanigans yet. But that’s sort of the problem, as well: it’s just the same thematic beats, time and time again. Haunted houses, dark rooms, spooky forests, the undead, etc. But as human beings, we fear the unknown. We fear difference. Weird shit. So then, who better to design a truly bizarre take on horror than the folks who brought us the equally-bizarre-but-for-entirely-different reasons Vidiot Game? And thus, The 4th Wall was born. This game is basically brilliant. After the break, I will tell you why.

The 4th Wall is, in short, completely abstract. It takes place in some sort of computer grid television fuzz dimension, and as you walk around, things just sort of… happen. I don’t want to spoil too much, but ethereal lights dance about – sometimes spiriting you away to unsettling new locales – and oddly threatening electronic sounds litter the sonic landscape. 4th Wall’s excellent, too, at introducing you to some gut-wrenching new sight (say, an infinite expanse of blackness where eyeballs appear and just kind of blink at you) and then – just as you begin to get comfortable – pulling the rug right out from under your feet again. And sure, it has a few “OOOOGHAABOOOGHA” leap-out-of-your-chair moments, but it largely opts to focus on the extremely unsettling alien-ness of its world.

The whole thing runs on this strange, almost dream-like logic. Occasionally, that caused me to lose track of what to do next, but by and large, it only drove home 4th Wall’s otherworldly nature. For instance, at one point, my movement slowed and it was like my character was fighting against his/her/its own limbs to trudge ever forward. There was definitely a certain sleep-paralysis-like feeling to it. But, taken in conjunction with the sights all around me, it just kind of made sense.

To be honest, this one’s incredibly tough to explain. Fortunately, there are three ways you can experience it, and two of them are completely free. First up, there’s an old version that was made for 7DFPS, and – while not quite as polished or lengthy – it won’t cost you a cent. Then there’s the new version, which will run you a measly $1, or – if you’re still on the fence because your frugality knows no limits – there’s also a free demo of that version.

So then, get to it. Also, without spoiling it, I must inform you that there’s a truly wild “twist” ending. You won’t see it coming, but believe me: you’ll know it when you see it. I’d recommend going in free of foreknowledge, but if you need more enticing, here’s a trailer.

Thanks for writing about this. I’m preemptively linking to my Indievania page in the event my website crashes: link to indievania.com . Also, a small percentage of people have reported that their AV flags this game as a virus, this is a false positive. Unfortunately I can’t do much about it because of how the game is made. Updating your virus definitions to the latest might fix it, otherwise you will need to ignore the warning.

So I’ve just played this. Not entirely sure if it is over yet. And that is amazing. Scared out of my fucking wits to be sitting at my computer doing anything at all, but have a desperate need to know if it is now over. Both fuck and thank you GZStorm.

Yeah, I tentatively searched for a clue (spoiler link) in here to see if there was nothing else hiding out. In fact, I was expecting something in there to greet me with even more unsettling things, but nothing was there.

The reason the Gray Man was in there is because this entire game was based off of a set of my phobias: I’m the guy in the credits in regards to special thanks (Dezmond Castner).

On my YouTube channel I have a bit of a reputation for being un-wavered by almost every traditionally scary game ever made, so GZ Storm set out to purposefully make a game that would scare the hell out of me, and if you watch the videos of me playing the original (search The 4th Wall AzuriteReaction on youtube) you’ll see he succeeded.

What are your computer specs? It may be possible for whatever reason your hardware may not be compatible with the game. Send me an e-mail at jesse@gzstorm.com with your specs and I’ll see if I can figure out what the issue is.

I watched a Youtube playthrough video to see if I’d finished it. Still not sure. I got to the “4th Wall event” but it was definitely different to the Youtube video. Perhaps there are multiple endings, but I doubt I’d go through it again. One of the triggers near the end is a little annoying.

I definitely found it unsettling but there was nothing to make me jump. Doom 3 may have burned out that part of my brain.

I’m not sure how you managed to convolute the terms ‘critic’ and ‘journalist’ so much to equate to different things across different media. There are movie critics, and movie journalists, just as there are game critics, and game journalists.

Surely the RPS writers transcend both these descriptions, and quite neatly fall into the category of critics when reviewing (however briefly) a game. Besides, a journalist also has to provide a balanced argu…

Nevermind. Forget it. Now I recall why I stopped commenting on articles (even on this lovely site) for so long.

You’re clearly a smart enough guy. Do you want to try and tell me how this turned from a discussion on a game into a debate on semantics in less than 3 posts?

See above, where the developer himself soothes your fears (which seems somewhat counterproductive for a horror game but whatever). If you can’t get AVG to stop being dumb by updating definitions or whatever then you really ought to swap to the superior MSE anyways.